Chamber and committees

Prosecutors come into contact on a daily basis with individuals living with alcohol use disorder and its consequences. It is appropriate that COPFS staff are trained in relation to the causes and consequences of addiction, including alcohol use disorder, to allow for informed decision-making in the public interest.

Although the role of COPFS is limited in respect of accused persons, when addiction, including to alcohol, has contributed to offending, Prosecutors can consider diversion from prosecution and this may be offered where that would be in the public interest.

COPFS recently hosted a series of online webinars to inform staff of alcohol use disorder, Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and links between addiction and trauma. There are plans for future events and COPFS is exploring opportunities for further engagement with, and input from, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP).

In addition COPFS internal resources available to all staff include general information about alcohol consumption, alcohol dependency and mental health and signposting for general awareness.

Information is not held centrally on the most common way to consume illicit drugs.

In 2023, 14% of all adults had used any of the drugs listed in the Scottish Health Survey in the previous 12 months. The drug most commonly used in the 12 months prior to being interviewed was cannabis (9%) (The Scottish Health Survey 2023 - volume 1: main report - gov.scot). Cannabis is typically smoked.

The Drug and Alcohol Information System (DAISy) captures information on people seeking specialist drug treatment. Public Health Scotland publish statistics annually presenting an overview of initial assessments for specialist drug and alcohol treatment (Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy) overview of initial assessments for specialist drug and alcohol treatment 2023/24 - Drug and alcohol information system (DAISy) - Publications - Public Health Scotland). This includes an analysis of the route of both cocaine and heroin use.

Public Health Scotland also publish information on the provision of injecting equipment (Injecting equipment provision in Scotland - 2022 to 2023 - Injecting equipment provision in Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland) along with information from their Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) which aims to measure the uptake of harm reduction services among people who inject drugs in Scotland (Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) 13 August 2024 - Needle Exchange Surveillance Initiative (NESI) - Publications - Public Health Scotland).

The National Flood Resilience Strategy demonstrates our commitment to improving flood resilience through the use of data. It sets out that we will work with partners to review how we can improve the presentation and use of data to drive flood resilient activity. We will also look how to best use data to raise community awareness of current and future flood exposure to inform decision making and support communities on their climate adaptation journeys and explore how developing new datasets may help improve decision making.

As set out in answer S6W-32799 on 14 January 2025 when the Softer Landing, Safer Care programme was introduced health boards agreed with NES to implement the programme for International Medical graduates (IMGs) starting their first hospital placement in NHS Scotland. The programme is part of a coordinated offer that sits alongside the training pathway and is devolved for local implementation and oversight at local board level. IMGs, like other trainees, feedback their experience through established quality assurance processes such as the Scottish Training Survey. As such, the Scottish Government does not oversee the initiative.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 gave the Scottish Legal Aid Board the function of monitoring the availability and accessibility of legal services in Scotland, and it has arrangements in place to monitor legal services. However, any assessment of registered solicitor numbers does not offer an accurate measure of the provision or supply of legal aid. This is because there is a large number of registered solicitors who are inactive, so the reduction in the number of registered solicitors, doesn’t necessarily equate to the same size of reduction in active solicitors. Therefore, registered solicitor numbers should not be viewed in the same context as active solicitors. The relevant measure of supply is active solicitors.

However, fluctuations in the numbers of Children’s solicitors occur for various reasons, these are:

Children’s legal assistance volumes are directly related to the numbers of children’s hearings taking place. The volume of hearings is in turn related to the number of Compulsory Supervision Orders (CSOs) being made or reviewed.

There are fewer Compulsory Supervision Orders and therefore less business for solicitors in this field.

At 31 March 2024, 6,490 children were subject to Compulsory Supervision Orders. In 2019-20, the number was 8,875 – a reduction of 27%.

The number of children subject to Compulsory Supervision Orders has decreased for a fourteenth consecutive year.

The Scottish Government recognises that reform is needed to the legal aid system, which is why we are currently developing a legal aid action plan for reform which will be published in early 2025.

Scotland’s Fisheries Management Strategy is a ten year strategy and most of the actions relate to the ongoing delivery of our management functions. The progress being made with these will help ensure a stable context for fishing businesses to operate within. We intend to publish an updated Future Fisheries Management Delivery Plan in the coming months, which will provide information on the progress made for each of the 12 actions.

SEPA has robust resilience and emergency management processes in place with partners.

There is no change for stakeholders as they continue to use the unchanged Priority Partner number (emergency services). Previously callers would have used a specific number and spoke to a person in the Customer Hub and that process has not changed.

This information is not held by Scottish Government as Income Support is a reserved benefit administered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Please redirect your request to the DWP.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-32923 on 15 January 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The Scottish Government have previously published in an FOI response that £519,842.13 inc VAT was spent on investigating the creation of a Scottish public energy company. This information is available in detail at Public money spent on state run energy company: FOI release - gov.scot.